


Night Bloom

by Dispatches (orphan_account)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-10
Updated: 2010-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:38:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Dispatches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://acaciaonnastik.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://acaciaonnastik.livejournal.com/"><b>acaciaonnastik</b></a>. The prompt was "poker night".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Bloom

It took Katie a week to get used to not being able to hear the sea from her bedroom. She would wake up at odd hours in the middle of the night and sit up, cocking her head to listen for a sound that never came.

The gardens smelled different, even though some of the plants were the same, transplanted by the Ancients from Earth to Pegasus or vice versa. Millions of years of evolution had changed them enough that even two varieties with near-identical phenotypes might not be able to cross-pollinate. It upset her a little. She hadn't even been able to bring any plants back, not to her home. "Don't want to cause contamination," the SGC officer had said, and of course this was entirely reasonable and right, and it wasn't that she didn't _see_ that, but... a flower from Atlantis -- just one! not even a live one -- would have made a better memento than a photograph. Photographs could only touch her eyes; flowers could touch her heart.

*

She'd been bored in Pegasus, and frustrated, and scared (scared most of all), and she'd made discoveries and she'd made friends. She'd even fallen in love, kind of, though that hadn't worked out so well. (Everyone thought that why she was leaving. She let them believe it. It made things easier.)

She had been many things in Pegasus: a botanist, an explorer, an occasional soldier, a frequent bad poker player. No matter what role she'd been called upon to play, she had played it to the best of her ability. She'd never been sure that she was good enough, so she'd followed the advice her freshman college roommate had given her: _Fake it till you make it._ And it had worked, up to a point. At least, nobody had noticed that she was faking. (She hadn't made it yet.)

Until one evening, when Teyla made it to ladies' poker night. They always had a great time when Teyla was there; she couldn't make it often, being off-world so much on missions and spending so much time with her team-mates and the other Athosians, but when she could, the others always brought out the Athosian teas and pastries and made a special effort to be nice. (And, also, to bring their best game to the table, because Teyla could bluff better than any of them.) As usual, Teyla had cleaned them out early on, and they had spent the best part of the evening gossiping and bitching and swapping tips for getting past whatever regulation was bothering them the most that week.

It was Katie's turn to host, and once most of the players had drifted off, she started clearing up, smiling apologetically at the three who remained. Two of the three drifted off as well when she started (which was her main reason for starting; she had a lot of work to do the next day, and she needed sleep), leaving her alone with Teyla. She'd never been alone with Teyla before, and it made her a little nervous.

"May I help you?" Teyla said, her hand hovering over the cards still lying face-down on the table.

"Oh, no, please -- I'll take care of it."

Teyla smiled. "You must at least let me pick up the cards. I have never been good at housework, but I can do this much."

Katie laughed and gestured for Teyla to do as she liked, while she gathered up the glasses and cups and plates and wondered when she'd next have time to wash up. (Twelve days, most likely, and no earlier, with her schedule the way it was.)

She had her back to Teyla when Teyla said "You could have won that last hand, Katie."

Katie froze, not knowing what to say.

"Your cards were better than mine," Teyla went on.

"I didn't know that," said Katie. "Maybe next time."

She finished stacking the plates in the sink (most of them were borrowed; she'd have to squeeze in some dishwashing in a few days -- maybe if she skipped lunch?) and turned to find Teyla staring at her with frank and open curiosity in her eyes. "Forgive me if I am being rude," Teyla said, "but with a hand this good, your chances of winning were very high. Might it be more correct to say that you did not wish to win?"

Katie blinked. "Well," she said slowly, "my mother always told me it's not the winning that counts, it's the taking part."

"Does that mean you should not try to win?"

"Well. Well, no, but..."

Katie trailed off. She never really tried when they were playing; in fact, she always played it down when she got a good hand. She hadn't thought about it until now.

"Winning doesn't always make you popular," she said softly. "I don't mind not winning, so it doesn't matter. If someone else likes winning more than me..."

One side of Teyla's mouth lifted. "I must confess I have always relished victory, even in small things."

"Oh, I -- I didn't mean -- "

Teyla laughed. "I know what you meant." She stood up. "I should leave. It is late, and we both have work to do tomorrow."

Katie nodded, hoping that her smile showed only polite gratitude and not the relief she felt.

At the door, Teyla paused and turned to face her. "There are those who will tell you that you must make yourself smaller for the sake of others. They are wrong. You do others an injustice if you hide yourself from them."

*

(_If you want to know a people,_ she'd said to one of the anthropologists, _look at the crops they grow and how they grow them. That'll tell you more than their buildings or their furniture._ The Athosians' chief crop (when they had time and space to plant crops) was a variant of the kudzu: tough, adaptable, uncompromising. Katie had warned them that in the right (or wrong) climate, this plant would grow out of control, choking the ground and making it impossible to grow anything else. They had thanked her gravely and gone about their planting. Afterwards, she had felt foolish for giving them such a warning: were not the Wraith a weed grown out of control? Didn't the Athosians know what that was like, better than anyone?

But Teyla had taken care to thank her separately. "I have heard Dr McKay referring to 'kudzu' before," she had said, "and it has always sounded more like a monster than a plant. It would be most terrible if my people were to endure the cullings of the Wraith and yet still suffer because of mere ignorance."

Teyla was like that.)

*

(What she misses from Atlantis: the plants, the people, the sense of being involved in something of devestating importance.

What she doesn't miss: the long hours, the constant danger, being surrounded by people braver and more confident than she is.)

*

One day she's going over some handwritten notes she'd taken during a power outage -- she'd never gotten around to transcribing them -- and a flower falls out, its petals made pale and brittle by the loss of moisture. Her breath catches and she picks it up, ever so gently, not wanting to damage it. She raises it to her nose and sniffs, careful, careful, and the faint scent is not like anything on Earth.

And it's beautiful, but --

*

"There are flowers that grow better in the shade," she said to Teyla, marvelling at her boldness. "I guess I've always thought of myself that way."

Teyla frowned slightly, then nodded. "I know of one such flower. It grows in the shade of trees that grow near Stargates. It is considered lucky."

"Lucky? Oh -- I guess Wraith darts can't fly direct to planets where there are trees around the gate..."

Teyla nodded again. "That is so. Such planets are not immune to culling, but their inhabitants have more warning than others."

"But it's the trees that make them safer, not the flowers."

"Is it as simple as that?"

Katie opened her mouth to say "yes" -- but it was never as simple as that; ecosystems were complicated things. Maybe the flowers grew from seeds dropped by the trees; maybe their petals contained vital nutrients that helped the trees to grow; maybe they attracted insects that helped the trees to cross-pollinate; there was no knowing what might connect one plant to another in the web of life. In Pegasus, even planets weren't self-contained, with seeds and live plants passing from planet to planet all the time, both by accident and by design.

"No," she said slowly, "no, I guess it's not."

Teyla smiled brightly. Katie was suddenly reminded that Teyla was the best poker player on Atlantis. "Perhaps I can find you a specimen," Teyla said. "For you and your colleagues to study."

"I'd like that," said Katie mechanically.

Teyla inclined her head, halfway between a nod and a bow, and stepped across the threshold, the door sliding silently shut behind her.

*

It's beautiful, this flower. She'd forgotten about it -- always so much to do, but then there was a power outage and there was nothing she _could_ do except take notes with a flashlight and pray. In a corner of the lab, there it had been, blooming even as the other flowers were closing, _going to sleep_ she still thought of it in her head. She'd plucked one -- carefully -- and brought it over to where her notes were resting...and then the power had gone back on, and there had been frantic messages and things to do, and the handwritten notes hadn't been urgent enough to get her attention.

The blossom must have slipped from her hand and fallen between the pages, and stayed there, pressed and dried and perfect, since that power outage a year and a half ago.

Katie stares at it for a long moment, then crushes it in her hand. The petals crumble like old paper.

She has left Atlantis. She does not live, any more, in the shade of a stand of trees. She can bloom in the sunlight, now.

[end]


End file.
